Senate debates
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Matters of Public Importance
Carbon Pricing
5:10 pm
Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source
It was no surprise to me at all to hear my Tasmanian colleague Liberal Senator Bushby talking down the economy, and in doing so he is talking down the economy not just of this nation but also of his home state of Tasmania. That is something we cannot afford to hear in Tasmania. That kind of glass-half-empty attitude of setting their own political interests by talking down our economy does us absolutely no good in Tasmania, and certainly does Senator Bushby no good in trying to be a champion for the growing economy that we need in Tasmania.
What we do know about the carbon price is that our economy seeks to benefit and grow. We have developed an emissions trading scheme that, by putting a price on carbon, a price on pollution, is providing an opportunity for renewable energy technologies to grow in this country. That is a very good thing. It is a two-edged benefit not only for the business and economic development aspects but also for the environmental aspects of reducing pollution in our nation and, therefore, reducing global warming and the effects that it is having on our planet.
One thing we know about global warming is that it is global. It is not something that is confined just to the borders of any one country. It is something that is affecting our planet, it is something that is affecting our oceans, and it is something that we all need to play a part in, and that means not just Australia but all the countries in the world. Slowly, one by one—and we certainly were not the first—a number of countries are getting on and doing that. In the last week or so, a global emissions trading scheme is exactly what we have been able to share in and be a part of. That scheme, as we know it, will mean that Australia will be able to trade with the EU. When we say the 'EU', we are talking about some 35 countries that make up the European Union. So already we are getting on and, by 2015-16, which is the compliance year, will provide companies with access to a mature and established carbon market.
Who would have thought that the Liberal Party would come out against one of their own most fundamental philosophical beliefs, that of the market-driven economy? Who would have thought that? That is what we have just heard today from Senator Bushby in talking down the carbon pricing system. I am proud to be part of the Gillard Labor government, which has delivered such a system in line with our longstanding commitment to emissions trading and to dealing with the effects of climate change. Such effects go well beyond our own generation and ensure that, in reducing pollution in our atmosphere, we are leaving this planet in a much better place and condition for future generations than it has been—for posterity, for my children, for my grandchildren and for Senator Bushby's as well.
The coalition's claim that the carbon price is unravelling comes only two months after a very successful operation of the carbon price. To come here and say that it is unravelling when in fact it is actually operating really well and the sky has not fallen in, business is continuing to invest and Australia is continuing to have one of the best economies in the world just does not make sense. It shows again this kind of meddling with the truth, meddling with the facts, that the Liberal Party continue to espouse in this place. Facts are just a mild inconvenience for the opposition. They prefer, of course, the quick slogans rather than any kind of informed discussion and debate. It is not just scientific papers that the opposition will not read; it is even statements by companies, as we have been able to witness recently in relation to when BHP released their decision not to proceed with Olympic Dam. Mr Abbott did not even read that decision, yet had the audacity to go on the ABC's 7.30 program to comment on it. It did not suit his slogan of the day. There were facts but he didn't even bother to read the statement. Why read the statement to the stock market when you have already got your message sorted. It is all about ignoring the truth. Rather than getting to grips with the things that are genuinely affecting the jobs, lives and livelihoods of Australian families and workers, he would prefer to take the easy and lazy way out. Unfortunately, Liberal senators in this place are doing exactly the same thing and falling in line behind their leader, Mr Abbott, and his poor, pathetic slogans.
What do we know about the carbon price beyond just the environmental and economic benefits that it is going to provide? We also know that this carbon package is going to provide a whole suite of benefits for Australian families, and those benefits are something that will be under threat if, dare I say it, a Liberal government take hold of this country. Things that the opposition would potentially roll back if they were in power would be things like tax cuts. We have tripled the tax-free threshold to $18,000 a year.
Senator Bushby interjecting—
That is incredibly important for low-income Australians, of which there are many in our home state of Tasmania, as Senator Bushby would be very, very aware. It would include increases to pensions, benefits and other allowances to help households to offset a very modest increase to the cost of living as a result of the carbon price. We know that that modest increase—in fact, some $9.90 a week for households will be compensated by $10.10 per week. But, no, these facts, the truth of the matter, are things that the Liberal Party simply do not want to hear. They want to continue to go out there and pretend that every day is doomsday: we must roll back the clock and go back to the 1950s, turn off the fridge and hide in the dark because we certainly do not want to have a progressive economic reform agenda for this country! They do not want to accept the fact that our economy is doing well; they want to say that every day is doomsday. Do they really think the Australian people are that stupid? Do they really think that with all these slogans and rhetoric the Australian people are going to say: 'Yeah, the opposition are right. Things are really bad. The tax-free threshold was just increased to $18,000. That is a really bad policy.' We are doing our bit to reduce global warming for our planet and for our children and grandchildren. 'Oh, that's a really bad thing for our economy.' Do they really think that the Australian people are that stupid? The Australian people have been compensated for the mild increase in the cost of living that comes out of carbon pricing. That is something they understand. They know that we need to play our part, just as we are now through the setting up of trading with the EU and all the other countries.
Let us not forget all the other countries that have also got on with ensuring that they are developing an emissions trading scheme—countries like Indonesia, Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam. These are countries that have or are developing right now an emissions trading scheme, countries with whom we will also soon be trading with through our own scheme. Do the opposition just not get it? There are so many countries engaged ensuring that we are doing something on climate change. It is all out there. Australia should play and is playing its part. I am proud to say that the Gillard Labor government took that important step—a step that also comes with economic reform for our nation.
Last month the opposition leader again played with the truth and said that there were no developing carbon markets in the Asia-Pacific. I have just named at least five. It is really not that hard to see through these misleading claims, this stretching of the truth—that thousands of jobs will be lost, that millions of dollars in investment will just go up in smoke, that price increases will be unimaginable. All of this rhetoric is rubbish. The sky certainly has not fallen in. (Time expired)
Mark Addinall
Posted on 14 Oct 2012 3:46 pm
Curiously, the data released this week is not to be found on the front page of our news papers. There has been NO global warming for two decades.
Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly
released... and here is the chart to prove it
The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012
there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
This means that the pause in global warming has now lasted for about
the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
By DAVID ROSE
PUBLISHED: 21:42 GMT, 13 October 2012 | UPDATED: 01:21 GMT, 14 October
2012
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new
data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal
that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no
discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the plateau or pause in global warming has now lasted
for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose,
1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for
about 40 years.
global temperature changes
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and
sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and,
until today, it has not been reported.
This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures
six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 a very warm year.
Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend
since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler,
and thus this trend is erased.
Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the
Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week
dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is
too short a period from which to draw conclusions.
Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate
science department at Americas prestigious Georgia Tech university, told
The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to
predict future warming were deeply flawed.
Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand
the impact of natural variability factors such as long-term ocean
temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said
he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly
warmer than the previous two.
Warmer: Since 1880 the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius. This
image shows floating icebergs in Greenland
The regular data collected on global temperature is called Hadcrut 4, as
it is jointly issued by the Met Offices Hadley Centre and Prof Joness
Climatic Research Unit.
Since 1880, when worldwide industrialisation began to gather pace and
reliable statistics were first collected on a global scale, the world has
warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius.
Some scientists have claimed that this rate of warming is set to increase
hugely without drastic cuts to carbon-dioxide emissions, predicting a
catastrophic increase of up to a further five degrees Celsius by the end
of the century.
The new figures were released as the (English) Government made clear that
it would bend its own carbon-dioxide rules and build new power
stations to try to combat the threat of blackouts.
At last weeks Conservative Party Conference, the new Energy Minister,
John Hayes, promised that the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing
academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need
fuel for heat, light and transport energy policies, you might say, for
the many, not the few a pledge that has triggered fury from green
activists, who fear reductions in the huge subsidies given to wind-
turbine firms.
Flawed science costs us dearly
Here are three not-so trivial questions you probably wont find in your
next pub quiz. First, how much warmer has the world become since a) 1880
and b) the beginning of 1997? And what has this got to do with your ever-
increasing energy bill?
You may find the answers to the first two surprising. Since 1880, when
reliable temperature records began to be kept across most of the globe,
the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius.
From the start of 1997 until August 2012, however, figures released last
week show the answer is zero: the trend, derived from the aggregate data
collected from more than 3,000 worldwide measuring points, has been flat.
Not that there has been any coverage in the media, which usually reports
climate issues assiduously, since the figures were quietly release online
with no accompanying press release unlike six months ago when they
showed a slight warming trend.
The answer to the third question is perhaps the most familiar. Your bills
are going up, at least in part, because of the array of green subsidies
being provided to the renewable energy industry, chiefly wind.
They will cost the average household about £100 this year. This is set to
rise steadily higher yet it is being imposed for only one reason: the
widespread conviction, which is shared by politicians of all stripes and
drilled into children at primary schools, that, without drastic action to
reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, global warming is certain soon to
accelerate, with truly catastrophic consequences by the end of the
century when temperatures could be up to five degrees higher.
Hence the significance of those first two answers. Global
industrialisation over the past 130 years has made relatively little
difference.
And with the country committed by Act of Parliament to reducing CO2 by 80
per cent by 2050, a project that will cost hundreds of billions, the news
that the world has got no warmer for the past 16 years comes as something
of a shock.
It poses a fundamental challenge to the assumptions underlying every
aspect of energy and climate change policy.
This plateau in rising temperatures does not mean that global warming
wont at some point resume.
Damage: Global warming has been caused in part by the CO2 emitted by
fossil fuels. This image shows smoke billowing out of a power station
But according to increasing numbers of serious climate scientists, it
does suggest that the computer models that have for years been predicting
imminent doom, such as those used by the Met Office and the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are flawed, and that the
climate is far more complex than the models assert.
The new data confirms the existence of a pause in global warming,
Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric
Science at Americas Georgia Tech university, told me yesterday.
Climate models are very complex, but they are imperfect and incomplete.
Natural variability [the impact of factors such as long-term temperature
cycles in the oceans and the output of the sun] has been shown over the
past two decades to have a magnitude that dominates the greenhouse
warming effect.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that our attribution of warming
since 1980 and future projections of climate change needs to consider
natural internal variability as a factor of fundamental importance.
Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia, who found himself at the centre of the
Climategate scandal over leaked emails three years ago, would not
normally be expected to agree with her. Yet on two important points, he
did.
The data does suggest a plateau, he admitted, and without a major El Nino
event the sudden, dramatic warming of the southern Pacific which takes
place unpredictably and always has a huge effect on global weather it
could go on for a while.
Like Prof Curry, Prof Jones also admitted that the climate models were
imperfect: We dont fully understand how to input things like changes in
the oceans, and because we dont fully understand it you could say that
natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We dont know
what natural variability is doing.
Headache: The evidence is beginning to suggest that global warming may be
happening much slower than the catastrophists have claimed - a conclusion
with enormous policy implications for politicians at Westminster, pictured
Yet he insisted that 15 or 16 years is not a significant period: pauses
of such length had always been expected, he said.
Yet in 2009, when the plateau was already becoming apparent and being
discussed by scientists, he told a colleague in one of the Climategate
emails: Bottom line: the no upward trend has to continue for a total
of 15 years before we get worried.
But although that point has now been passed, he said that he hadnt
changed his mind about the models gloomy predictions: I still think
that the current decade which began in 2010 will be warmer by about 0.17
degrees than the previous one, which was warmer than the Nineties.
Only if that did not happen would he seriously begin to wonder whether
something more profound might be happening. In other words, though five
years ago he seemed to be saying that 15 years without warming would make
him worried, that period has now become 20 years.
Meanwhile, his Met Office colleagues were sticking to their guns. A
spokesman said: Choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales
can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-
decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system.
He said that for the plateau to last any more than 15 years was
unlikely. Asked about a prediction that the Met Office made in 2009
that three of the ensuing five years would set a new world temperature
record he made no comment. With no sign of a strong El Nino next year,
the prospects of this happening are remote.
Why all this matters should be obvious. Every quarter, statistics on the
economys output and models of future performance have a huge impact on
our lives. They trigger a range of policy responses from the Bank of
England and the Treasury, and myriad decisions by private businesses.
Yet it has steadily become apparent since the 2008 crash that both the
statistics and the modelling are extremely unreliable. To plan the future
around them makes about as much sense as choosing a wedding date three
months hence on the basis of a long-term weather forecast.
Few people would be so foolish. But decisions of far deeper and more
costly significance than those derived from output figures have been and
are still being made on the basis of climate predictions, not of the next
three months but of the coming century and this despite the fact that
Phil Jones and his colleagues now admit they do not understand the role
of natural variability.
The most depressing feature of this debate is that anyone who questions
the alarmist, doomsday scenario will automatically be labelled a climate
change denier, and accused of jeopardising the future of humanity.
So lets be clear. Yes: global warming is real, and some of it at least
has been caused by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. But the evidence is
beginning to suggest that it may be happening much slower than the
catastrophists have claimed a conclusion with enormous policy
implications.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Globa...
warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--
chart-prove-it.html#ixzz29EmUu0UX
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